Minimum Parking Requirements and Porirua City Centre
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Making Way for the Car: Minimum Parking Requirements and Porirua City Centre Angus Hulme-Moir Thesis Environmental Studies 593 2010 A 90 point thesis submitted to Victoria University of Wellington, as partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of Environmental Studies School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences Victoria University of Wellington February, 2010 2 Making Way for the Car: Minimum Parking Requirements and Porirua City Centre Angus Hulme-Moir Abstract Minimum parking requirements (MPRs) mandate that each new development provides enough parking to ensure ample provision at the time of peak demand. This approach tends to oversupply parking above the optimal level, and by bundling parking into the development costs, ensures that parking is free to the user. As a result, land-use and transport decisions are distorted. A case study of Porirua central business district (CBD) was undertaken to investigate the use of MPRs in the New Zealand context, and to assess their impacts on transport and land-use patterns. Findings indicate that MPRs tend to oversupply parking relative to weekly mean and peak occupancies. Land use mapping found that 24 percent of CBD land is allocated to car parking and MPRs were shown to contribute to dispersed development patterns. Stated choice data and a cost recovery model for car parking highlight how free and ample car parking provision favours car driving and has distortionary impacts on travel decisions. Key words: environmental policy, transport, minimum parking requirements, parking, integrated transport and land use planning, travel demand management 3 Acknowledgements There have been a large number of people who have assisted me in the course of this research. At Victoria University, my supervisor Ralph Chapman encouraged me and gave me sound guidance about the study‟s direction and content. Andrew Rae taught me to use Geographical Information Systems (GIS) from scratch while Dennis Dawson taught me how to use the SPSS statistical program. Thanks go to my classmates for coffees, turning up to count car parks and proof reading my scripts. The stated choice survey would not have gone ahead if it were not for the help of Doug Clover who was more enthusiastic than myself and kindly gave of his time, expertise and resources. A number of people at Porirua City Council were supportive of the work and gave of their time to help with the study. Winya Su from the GIS department provided the car parking template for mapping land use patterns. Andrew Jones tracked down resource consents and Geoff Marshall provided information on council parking studies. Wider organisations and individuals whom I wish to thank include the Centre for Sustainable Cities who employed me over the summer of 2009 and gave me a grant toward my research expenses. Quotable Value kindly supplied site and building floor areas free of charge and Lynley Povey at the Ministry of Transport accessed information on travel distances and trip types. Todd Litman (Canada), who has studied this area for many years, kindly read a draft copy and offered comments and encouragement in the process. Minimum parking requirements are a far cry from what I had initially planned to study. Julie Genter and Stuart Donovan are New Zealand‟s MPR crusaders and they got me enthused about the idea along with providing advice, ideas and encouragement. Lastly, I have Mary to thank along with my children Georgia, Jacob and Reuben. They tolerated, at times, an absent and distracted father and partner. They also enjoyed telling all and sundry that their dad counted car parks for a living. 4 Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... 3 Contents .................................................................................................................................... 4 List of Figures ........................................................................................................................... 6 List of Tables ............................................................................................................................ 6 List of Appendices .................................................................................................................... 6 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 7 1.1 The car era ............................................................................................................... 7 1.2 Environmental and social impacts of vehicle use ................................................... 7 1.3 Impacts on urban form ............................................................................................ 8 1.4 A transition toward sustainable transport patterns .................................................. 9 1.5 Mandated parking requirements ............................................................................ 10 2. Research Aims and Objectives ........................................................................................... 12 2.1 Aims ...................................................................................................................... 12 2.2 Objectives .............................................................................................................. 12 3. Conceptual Framework ....................................................................................................... 13 3.1 Framing the debate ................................................................................................ 13 3.2 Economic framework ............................................................................................ 14 3.3 Market failure in the transport sector .................................................................... 17 3.4 Parking and market failure .................................................................................... 17 4. Literature review ................................................................................................................. 19 4.1 A brief history of minimum parking requirements ............................................... 19 4.2 Predictive variables used to set parking rates ....................................................... 20 4.3 Study sites ............................................................................................................. 22 4.4 Peak occupancy ..................................................................................................... 22 4.5 Impacts of MPRs: Sprawl ..................................................................................... 23 4.6 Impacts of MPRs: Induced demand for driving .................................................... 25 4.7 Impacts of MPRs: Amenity, externalities and other modes .................................. 25 5. Methodology ....................................................................................................................... 27 5.1 Research location: Porirua CBD ........................................................................... 27 5.2 Parking regulatory framework .............................................................................. 29 5.3 Why Porirua? ........................................................................................................ 31 5.4 Occupancy study ................................................................................................... 32 5.5 Geographical Information Systems: Mapping the CBD ....................................... 34 5.6 Stated choice survey ............................................................................................. 35 6. Data Analysis ...................................................................................................................... 40 6.1 Occupancy data: Overview ................................................................................... 40 6.2 Occupancy data: Mean utilisation rates ................................................................ 42 6.3 Occupancy data: Peak rates ................................................................................... 43 6.4 Correlation between parking demand and GFA ................................................... 47 6.5 Occupancy data: Parking at the walkable scale .................................................... 49 6.6 Parking cost recovery model ................................................................................. 50 5 6.7 Stated choice survey .............................................................................................. 54 6.8 GIS data: Land use implications ........................................................................... 58 7. Discussion ........................................................................................................................... 61 7.1 Five reasons for changing parking arrangements in Porirua ................................. 62 7.2 Alternative approaches .......................................................................................... 67 7.3 Research limitations and contributions ................................................................. 71 8. Concluding remarks ...........................................................................................................